Elsewhere, we have explored Luke Anguhadluq’s works in depth. His distinctive drawings and resultant print, shaped by an untrained yet deeply intuitive approach, offer a remarkable testament to traditional Inuit life and raw talent. Anguhadluq rendered scenes with a striking immediacy, distilling movement and narrative into forms with such a palpable feeling that it secured his place as a defining figure in Inuit art.

There is, to our eye, a striking resonance between the works of Luke Anguhadluq and those of Outsider artist Bill Traylor. Though they emerged from vastly different cultural and geographic contexts, both artists harness the power of silhouette with an almost supernatural ability. Both Anguhadluq’s and Traylor’s figures — flattened, inky forms — are stripped to their most essential, yet they pulse with energy, charged with the suggestion of motion and story. In Fisherman + Hunter (Fisherman and Hunter), Anguhadluq’s stark silhouettes inhabit a world in flux: bodies bend, animals shift, and hunters hover, poised in moments of action.

References: For similar silhouetted works with humans and animals by Bill Traylor, see Goat, Camel, Lion and Figures, c. 1939 (graphite on repurposed card, 14 x 22 in.) which sold at Christie’s on 18 Jan 2023 for USD 252,000). See also Bill Traylor, Exciting Event, Snake, Plow, Figures Chasing Rabbit, 1939-1942, pencil on cardboard, 22 1/8 x 14 1/8 inches (56.2 x 35.9 cm) from the from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and Family Collections at David Zwiner Gallery, New York.

For other early prints by Luke Anguhadluq with similar silhouetted forms see, Fishing Camp, 1970 (1971 #28), First Arts, 4 Dec 2024, Lot 76; see also Fishing, 1973 (1974 #17). Early drawings which are akin stylistically see Untitled (Opposing Lines of Animals), c. 1969, graphite pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 48.3 x 61 cm, Fig. 27 in Marion E. Jackson, Baker Lake Inuit Drawings: A Study in the Evolution of Artistic Self-Consciousness, University of Michigan, PhD Dissertation, 1985. See also Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993), figs. 7, 36, 46 and cat. Nos., 1, 2, 3, 42 and others.